Perform – the options are endless – a violin with a guitar, a piano/flute duet, or a piano in a jazz trio. Performance builds an even higher level of self-confidence and musical skills.

GENEVA –  To cheers and standing ovations from scientists, the world’s biggest atom smasher claimed the discovery of a new subatomic particle Wednesday, calling it “consistent” with the long-sought Higgs boson — popularly known as the “God particle” — that helps explain what gives all matter in the universe size and shape.

“We have now found the missing cornerstone of particle physics,” Rolf Heuer, director of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), told scientists. MORE

Hillary Clinton praised a former president to a crowd of cheering liberal supporters earlier this month as “absolutely committed” and unwavering in his support of one of her causes.

The man she spoke of was not her husband, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama, whom she hopes to succeed. It was George W. Bush — long one of the left’s most potent villains. MORE

Editor’s note: This is part 3 of a series examining Pope Francis’ papacy over the last three years. See part 1 here and part 2 here.

June 15, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – It’s one of the most frequent talking points of Pope Francis. It’s definitely part of his appeal for the media and simultaneously one of the most hurtful things for those inside the Church for whom the faith means everything. I’m speaking of the Pope’s penchant for castigating faithful adherents of the Catholic faith as “obsessed,” “doctors of the law,” “neo-pelagian,” “self-absorbed,” “restorationist,” “fundamentalist,” “rigid,” “ideological,” “hypocritical,” and much more. MORE

The last Catholic priest to have been imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp has died at age 102.

Father Hermann Scheipers was a young priest in 1940 when he was arrested by the Nazis and taken to the camp, near Munich. Dachau had a large population of priests: some 95% of the 2,720 clergymen imprisoned there were Catholic.

Father Scheipers died June 2 in Ochtrup in Münsterland, the same town where he was born on July 24, 1913. MORE

Is it too late?

WASHINGTON — More than 50 State Department diplomats have signed an internal memo sharply critical of the Obama administration’s policy inSyria, urging the United States to carry out military strikes against the government of President Bashar al-Assad to stop its persistent violations of a cease-fire in the country’s five-year-old civil war. MORE

June 17, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis spoke yesterday at a pastoral congress on the family for the Diocese of Rome, and his remarks are causing consternation among faithful Catholics. In off-the-cuff remarks, the pope made the dual claim that the “great majority” of Catholic marriages are “null” – in other words, not actual marriages – and that some cohabitating couples are in a “real marriage,” receiving the grace of the Sacrament. MORE

Pope Francis’s three-year-old papacy, marred by controversy from the beginning, has hit a new low.

After Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected to succeed Pope Benedict XVI in 2013, he quickly justified his reputation as an unconventional character who put himself on both sides of an argument with vaguely worded pronouncements.

From his “Who am I to judge?” statement on gay people that seemed to offer a hint at a change in church teaching, to his fumbles on contraception, to his recent claim that Donald Trump is not Christian, his off-the-cuff remarks cause headlines across the globe, often followed by some sort of “clarification” from the Holy See Press Office. MORE

Vol 9 Issue 25 ~ Editor: Rev. Fr. Courtney Edward Krier
June 18, 2016 ~ Saint Ephrem, opn!

1. Baptism: Means of Salvation (73)
2. Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
3. St Juliana Falconieri
4. Christ in the Home (47)
5. Articles and notices

Dear Reader:

The third Sunday of June has been designated as Father’s Day. It is near impossible to find true fathers, but those who are should be honored and given the respect they deserve. Today’s society does everything to destroy the role of the father and unfortunately fathers are only too willing to neglect their responsibility. Saint Joseph received the role of being a foster father to the Christ Child and there is nothing other that he is known for except that of what he did to provide for the Holy Family: a carpenter. It is the same for all true Fathers. Continue reading →

The governor of Istanbul has banned gay, lesbian and transgender individuals from holding pride parades at their usual venue, citing security concerns.

It said Friday that marches departing from the Turkish city’s iconic Taksim neighborhood would not be allowed “for the safety of our citizens and the participants.”

The LGBT community has called for demonstrations on June 19 and June 26, bookending pride week.MORE

SPRING CITY, Tenn. — In an immaculate control room at the Watts Bar nuclear plant, green bars flash on a large screen, signaling something that has not happened in the United States in two decades.

As control rods lift from the water in the core, and neutrons go about the business of splitting uranium atoms, life comes to a new nuclear reactor — the first in the country since its sister reactor here was licensed in 1996. MORE

Resentment toward the EU hit a new high yesterday when the upper house of the Swiss parliament on Wednesday followed in thefootsteps of Iceland, and voted to invalidate its 1992 application to join the European Union, backing an earlier decision by the lower house. The vote comes just a week before Britain decides whether to leave the EU in a referendum. Twenty-seven members of the upper house, the Council of States, voted to cancel Switzerland’s longstanding EU application, versus just 13 senators against. Two abstained the Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported.

Thomas Minder, counsellor for the state of Schaffhausen and an active promoter of the concept of “Swissness,” said he was eager to “close the topic fast and painlessly” as only “a few lunatics” may want to join the EU now, he told the newspaper. MORE

No, you are not seeing double. That dog is actually wearing a novus ordo priestly vestment and contributed to the novus ordo “mess!”.

As you can see by this article on St. Silverius that Empress Theodora had more power than the Pope and this is in 536. So you can see why the Popes had to take stronger measures to better arm themselves to defend Rome.
In Christ, Joseph

Lives of the Saints, by Alban Butler, Benziger Bros. ed. [1894], at sacred-texts.com

June 20.—ST. SILVERIUS, Pope and Martyr.

SILVERIUS was son of Pope Hermisdas, who had been married before he entered the ministry. Upon the death of St. Agapetas, after a vacancy of forty-seven days, Silverius, then subdeacon, was chosen Pope, and ordained on the 8th of June, 536. Continue reading →